Ken Shannon Northwest Branch Greater Wichita Ymca

We had my daughter’s 7th birthday party here recently. Even though we booked only two weeks before the party, they were able to accommodate us on the day/timeframe we wanted. Staff made the reservation process super simple. Daughter chose the gymnastics/tumbling party, but they also have swimming and rock climbing. We met in a room for eating cupcakes/gathering for half an hour, then all of the kids moved down the hall to the younger kid’s gymnastics/Ninja Zone room for an hour and a half of play time. All the gymnastics equipment was out and kids had a blast playing on the bars and beams, in the foam pit, and climbing the ninja slide thing. The Y made this the easiest birthday party ever. The super reasonably priced birthday package included 10 kids, chocolate and/or vanilla cake or cupcakes (from a local small business bakery!), decorations in the colors of our choice in the party room, and even gift bags! Then they did all the room cleanup. Extra child guests were $10 each, to be paid after the party was over. We literally only had to bring our daughter. It was amazing! We got quite a few comments from parents on how great the setup was and how much fun their kids had. Highly recommend!

The gym is fine but they need to crank up the AC. Even 1° F would be an improvement. Might be getting too busy - I've gone in and every treadmill has been in use. Maybe they need to raise the rates to help pay to keep it cooler.

Being an adult and only allowed to climb 3-4 feet on a bouldering wall without a belay certification is a joke, not only is that irrelevant to what a belay course covers it's punishing me as a member. Further more skipping a belay course for a month for July 4th is very frustrating without conceding a make-up course. A respectable place to work out, but somewhere you'll be punished for wanting to climb without an irrelevant certification.

Extremely disappointed with the lack of integrity and poor customer service at this YMCA. We were charged a simple $30 fee because our membership payment did not go through due to a fraudulent transaction on the debit card on file. While I understand the automated fee, the way the staff handled it was dishonest. They claimed they had reached out via email and phone call, which was a lie because we received nothing.My wife went to a different YMCA due to the classes they offered for 3 weeks and they did not mention anything to us. We went to this YMCA one day for them to finally let us know about the situation. We were fully willing to change our payment options. We were told that if we change from debit card to our bank account and that this was our first time it would likely be refunded. Instead we got a call from a manager the week after, essentially calling us liars by saying he didn’t believe we didn’t get the emails or calls. Also, telling us that adding our bank account does nothing to the issue. Avoid this location if you value honest communication.

The YMCA is NOT a family gym. We have been members for years and as our kids outgrew the kidzone it has become increasingly clear there are very few options for kids to actually use the facility. They are not even allowed upstairs with supervision until 8 years old (yes, there is kidzone but it is designed for babies and preschoolers). There is no space to exercise downstairs with your kids since you can bring them upstairs. We have tried bringing our kids to open gym where they keep all the basketball goals at 10 ft. There were less than 10 kids there and the six people at the front desk refused to lower one goal for our youngest. They proceeded to lie and tell us they didn’t have smaller goals when we know they do because we’ve seen them used for the youth basketball program we participate in. I have called the sports director and don’t get a response. This is a fine gym for adults. It is not a facility for kids.